If these features are what you need in your next espresso maker:
- Easy to use? Check.
- Makes good espresso? Check.
- Froths milk? Check.
- Not super expensive? Check.
- On sale for Cyber Monday? Check
Then I think I've found what you're looking for. For Cyber Monday, Amazon has dropped the price of the super popular and well-reviewed Breville Bambino Plus Espresso Machine to $399.95 after a 20% discount. This machine is rarely discounted, even on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. You can read the reviews online, but the Bambino Plus is well-regarded, even among the coffee snobs, as an incredible bang for your buck at retail price, especially if you like pouring yourself lattes or other milk-based coffee drinks. To get something appreciably better, you'll have to pay north of $1,000.
Breville the Bambino Plus Espresso Machine
The Bambino Plus is an amazing starter machine for pouring espressos. It has a lot of neat features that are intended to help you on your way to pulling a great shot without much manual fiddling. These features include a 15 bar Italian pump that can maintain a steady 9 bars of pressure while you're pouring your shot, a low pressure pre-infusion that soaks your grounds before full pressure is applied, Breville's ThermoJet heating system (instead of a traditional boiler) that can hit target temp in as fast as 3 seconds, and a digital temperature control (PID) that maintains a consistent temperature without your input. All of these features are great, but the PID especially allows you to coast on rails compared to a traditional boiler-based machine which needs to be dialed in and requires a more "personal touch".
The Bambino Plus also has an excellent milk frother with a very unique auto-froth mode that, as its namesake suggests, will froth your milk for you. You can even choose your froth level. It's actually quite good at doing it automatically, and totally latte art friendly. One thing to consider is that this espresso machine does not have its own grinder. I consider that a positive because then I can go out and buy one of my own choosing with better grind capabilities. Also, if one of the machines break, I don't have to go out and get both.
So what does that all mean? Well, the Bambino Plus makes it easier to dial in a great cup of espresso and repeat it every time. It's one less variable you need to worry about, and you don't need to learn how to become a great barista to serve some great coffee. Like I said before, it's perfect for making milk-based drinks like lattes and cappuccinos because it's great at frothing. You really shouldn't spend a lot of money on a high-end machine just to make milk drinks. High-end machines are better at extracting the subtle flavors of different coffee beans, and milk does a great job of hiding all of that.
I owned the Bambino Plus for a number of years and absolutely loved it. Eventually I moved on and purchased a Breville Dual Boiler, which cost me over $1,000. I wouldn't even say that my coffee improved. It was just easier to serve multiple people instead of a few. If you want to move on from your Nespresso or Keurig and pour yourself a real espresso, there aren't many options that are cheaper or perfect for a beginner than the Bambino Plus.
More Totally Random Cyber Monday Deals
Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy are all one-stop shopping sites, so it makes sense that their Cyber Monday sales extend beyond gaming and tech. Here are some interesting deals I've seen so far on small kitchen appliances, personal care products like hair dryers and toothbrushes, vacuum cleaners, and other convenient necessities that everyone – gamers included – might find useful. On a personal note, although air fryers are all the rage these days, I bought my Instant Pot pressure cooker over 10 years ago and I still use it weekly. My air fryer sits in the cabinet.
Will the Deals Change for Cyber Monday?
In my experience, many of the same deals we saw on Black Friday will return for Cyber Monday 2024, including deals that were sold out or expired. Retailers usually release their hottest selling items in batches so that every sale event has at least some inventory reserved. That said, I also expect plenty of new, never before seen deals. Traditionally, Black Friday was known as the "retail holiday," where the best deals were found in-store, and Cyber Monday was known as the "online holiday," where the best deals were online only. Although today the lines have blurred, it is still true that many online only retailers still consider Cyber Monday the sale event of the year instead of Black Friday. Expect some amazing sales to come out of online-only sites like Amazon, Newegg, Dell, HP, Lenovo and several online-only deals from traditional retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. In fact, Amazon has taken the preemptive and already switched over to Cyber Monday.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
